
# Codebook for U.S. Congressional Bill Information: 1973-2024 (93rd - 118th)

The U.S. Congressional Bill Information Data are sourced from the official [website](congress.gov) of US Congress. This dataset includes all bills that reached floor consideration or later stages in the U.S. Congress from the 93rd Congress (1973–1974) through the 118th Congress (2023–2024). The four files are:

- **billinfo.csv**: the information of bills (titles, sponsors, etc.), uniquely identified by `billnumber` by `congress` by `sponsor_order`.
- **bill_cosponsor.csv**: the full list of cosponsors of each bill, uniquely identified by `billnumber` by `congress` by `cosponsor_order`.
- **bill_related.csv**: the full list of related bills listed on the Congress website, uniquely identified by `billnumber` by `congress` by `relatedbill_order`.
- **bill_subjectterm.csv**: the list of subject terms of each bill (see the [full list](https://www.congress.gov/help/field-values/legislative-subject-terms) of bill subject terms.)

The data are sourced, cleaned, organized, and structured by Sai Zhang. When using the data, please cite: Zhang, Sai, 2025, "US Congressional Bill Information: 1973-2024 (93rd - 118th)", [https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XHBFF4](https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XHBFF4), Harvard Dataverse.

If you have encountered any issues, please contact Sai Zhang via [saizhang@usc.edu](mailto:saizhang@usc.edu).

## Variables

The variables are listed as they appear in the data files:

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### billinfo.csv

- **billnumber**: the legislation number of the bill
- **congress**: the congress number
- **sponsor_order**: sponsor identifier for bills with multiple sponsors
- **title**: title of the bill
- **partyofsponsor**: the party of the sponsor
- **dateofintroduction**: the introduction date of the bill
- **latestaction**: latest action of the bill listed on the Congress website
- **latestactiondate**: the date of the latest action listed
- **numberofcosponsors**: the total number of cosponsors of the bill.
- **billpolicyarea**: the policy area of the bill (see [vocabulary](https://www.congress.gov/help/field-values/policy-area))
- **numberofrelatedbills**: the total number of related bills
- **sponsor_name**: the name of the sponsor
- **sponsor_pos**: the position of the sponsor (in the format of `title`-`party`-`state`-`district`)
- **sponsor_lastname** the last name of the sponsor
- **state2**: the two digit state code for the sponsor
- **district**: the district of the sponsor, 0 if state-wide (senators and at-large house representatives)
- **committees_house**: the house committees related to the bill (see [full list](https://www.congress.gov/committees) of committees), each observation could contain multiple committees
- **committees_senate**: the senate committees related to the bill (see [full list](https://www.congress.gov/committees) of committees), each observation could contain multiple committees

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### bill_cosponsor.csv

- *billnumber*: the legislation number of the bill
- *congress*: the congress number
- *cosponsor_order*: the order of cosponsors, as listed on the Congress website
- *cosponsor_name*: the name of the cosponsor
- *cosponsor_pos*: the position of the cosponsor (in the format of `title`-`party`-`state`-`district`)
- *cosponsor_lastname* the last name of the cosponsor
- *state2*: the two digit state code for the cosponsor
- *district*: the district of the cosponsor, 0 if state-wide (senators and at-large house representatives)

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### bill_related.csv

- *billnumber*: the legislation number of the bill
- *congress*: the congress number
- *relatedbill_order*: the order of the related bills, as listed on the Congress website
- *relatedbill_number*: the legislation number of the related bills

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### district

- *billnumber*: the legislation number of the bill
- *congress*: the congress number
- *billsubjectterm*: the subject terms of the bills
- *billsubject_order*: the order of the subject terms, as listed on the Congress website

## Version Control

- The current version was published in July, 2025.
